Where did SPAM's name originate from?

Question

Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam's gelatinous glaze, or aspic, forms from the cooling of meat stock.[1] The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.

Varieties of Spam vary by region and include Spam Classic, Spam Hot & Spicy, Spam Less Sodium, Spam Lite, Spam Oven Roasted Turkey, Hickory Smoked, and Spam Spread.[2]

Spam sold in North America, South America, and Australia is produced in Austin, Minnesota, (also known as Spam Town USA) and in Fremont, Nebraska. Spam for the UK market is produced in Denmark by Tulip under license from Hormel.[3] Spam is also made in the Philippines and in South Korea.[4] In 2007, the seven billionth can of Spam was sold.[5]


Name origin
Introduced on July 5, 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen when the product, whose original name was far less memorable (Hormel Spiced Ham), began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name "Spam" was "Shoulder of Pork and Ham".[6] According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam – The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president, who was given a $100 prize for creating the name.[7] At one time, the official explanation was that the name was a portmanteau of "Spiced Ham". According to the British documentary-reality show "1940's House", when SPAM was offered by the United States to those affected by World War II in the UK, SPAM stood for Specially Processed American Meats.

Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat", "Specially Processed Artificial Meat", "Stuff, Pork and Ham", "Spare Parts Animal Meat" and "Special Product of Austin Minnesota".[8]

According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase "SPAM luncheon meat".

[edit] Nutritional data
Spam is typically sold in cans with a net weight of 340 grams (12 ounces). A 56 gram (2 ounce) serving of original Spam provides seven grams of protein, two grams of carbohydrates, 15 grams of fat (23% US Daily Value) including 6 grams of saturated fat (28% U.S. Daily Value), and 170 calories. A serving also contains nearly a third of the recommended daily intake of sodium (salt). A 56 gram serving of Spam contains 767 mg of sodium, equivalent to approximately 2 grams of salt, indicating about 3.6% of Spam's mass is salt. Spam provides very little in terms of vitamins and minerals (0% vitamin A, 1% vitamin C , 1% calcium, 3% iron). It has been listed as a food that is a poor choice for weight loss and optimum health and as a food that "is high in saturated fat and sodium".[9]

[edit] Varieties
There are several different flavors of Spam, including:[10]

Spam Classic – original flavor
Spam Hot & Spicy – with tabasco flavor
Spam Less Sodium – "25% less sodium"
Spam Lite – "33% less calories and 50% less fat"
Spam Oven Roasted Turkey
Spam Hickory Smoke flavor
Spam Spread – "if you're a spreader, not a slicer ... just like Spam Classic, but in a spreadable form"
Spam with Bacon
Spam with Cheese
Spam Garlic
Spam Golden Honey Grail – a limited-release special flavor made in honor of Monty Python's SPAMALOT Broadway musical
Spam Mild
In addition to flavor, some of the tins come in smaller sizes than normal, many consumers, however, consider this to be beneficial. A more popular option is the 7 oz (200g) size can. Recently, "Spam Singles" have been produced: a single sandwich-sized slice of Spam (Classic or Lite), wrapped in plastic instead of a metal container.

International usage

Spam advertisement on back cover of Time magazine on May 14, 1945.As of 2003, Spam is sold in 41 countries worldwide.

[edit] United States and territories
In the United States, Spam is quite popular, but is sometimes associated with economic hardship, due to its relatively low cost.[11]

The residents of the state of Hawaii and the territories of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) consume the most Spam per capita in the United States. On average, each person on Guam consumes 16 tins of Spam each year and the numbers at least equal this in the CNMI. Guam, Hawaii, and Saipan, the CNMI's principal island, have the only McDonald's restaurants that feature Spam on the menu. Burger King, in Hawaii, began serving Spam in 2007 on its menu to compete with

Answer 1

YOU ANSWERED YOUR OWN QUESTION - spiced ham.

Answer 2

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RE:

Where did SPAM's name originate from?

Spam is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labeled ingredients in the classic variety of Spam are chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, modified potato starch as a binder, and sodium nitrite to help keep its color. Spam's gelatinous...

Answer 3

Where Did Spam Come From

Answer 4

ALL OF YOU ARE WRONG!! I am descendant from the Hormel Family.My great Uncle helped develop the product.I am so amused but tired of all the wrong answers!First off Spam was developed primarily at the request in 1937 from United States Military. The Army commissioned various food processors to create a food for their use. It has to be developed for the troops as rations when on maneuvers or at battle. First it had to have Salt, to help the personnel retain water as they had rations of water only. The salt help the body retain water. Secondly it has to have a shelve life of at least 3 years. It had to be compact and the tin it was in had to be easily opened with no tools. I.E. in battle in the trenches, easily accessible. It has to be light weight, designed to feed 1 or 2 men and be 12 ounces or less. Being made of tin it could also be bio degradable over time. The meat had to be pre-cooked, high in fat, high protein. This would give them the needed energy. The use of sugar in the product is also of reasoning. Important it had to contain besides protein, a carbohydrate-hence the potato starch in the recipe. Most of all it had to be cheap to make for mass production. Hormel won the contract for the most palatable food product, that supplied everything requested. It satisfied hunger and digested slowly, so they felt full longer. It could be used for a breakfast, lunch or dinner meat. Upon the award of the contract. The Army specified it would be called a certain name for their Supply Requisition, which Hormel agreed, and adopted the name when it went public.........."S P A M" is the Abbreviation for ""Special Processed Army Meat"". I hope the real story is now told and all these ridiculous stories end finally...JH

Answer 5

There was a Monty Python skit where they chanted the word "spam" over and over and over, ad nauseam. This mindless repetion suggests the multiple e-mailings that constitute e-mail spam. Spam comes in cans and is not real meat, sort of, so that fits, too.

Answer 6

Monty Python!

Answer 7

"SPAM" somebody won a competition by Hormel (the manufacturers) to name the meat, probably based on the first two letters of each word as it actually was spiced ham

Answer 8

And I always thought that spam was, irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users.

Answer 9

SPAM is short for SPiced hAM



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